“Theatre – through the actor’s technique, his art in which the living organism strives for higher motives – provides an opportunity for what could be called integration, the discarding of masks, the revealing of the real substance: a totality of physical and mental reactions.

“This opportunity must be treated in a disciplined manner, with a full awareness of the responsibilities it involves. Here we can see the theatre’s therapeutic function for people in our present day civilization. It is true that the actor accomplishes this act, but he can only do so through an encounter with the spectator – intimately, visibly, not hiding behind a cameraman, wardrobe mistress, stage designer or make-up girl – in direct confrontation with him, and somehow ‘instead of’ him.

“The actor’s act – discarding half measures, revealing, opening up, emerging from himself as opposed to closing up – is an invitation to the spectator. This act could be compared to an act of the most deeply rooted, genuine love between two human beings – this is just a comparison since we can only refer to this ‘emergence from oneself’ through analogy. This act, paradoxical and borderline, we call a total act. In our opinion it epitomizes the actor’s deepest calling.”

A quick shoutout to Greg Dunham – a Praxis Theatre alumnai who made his feature film debut this past weekend in the critically acclaimed new film The Lookout.

You might remember Greg from our Partron’s Pick-winning production The Blood of a Coward at the 2004 Toronto Fringe Festival:

He was winning raves even back then:

“Greg Dunham and Erin King do wonderful work as the aging writer and his young alter ego, as other figures (including Bukowski’s parents) stream by.”– Alex Bozikovic, from his Eye Weekly review of The Blood of a Coward.

Here’s the poster from the new film (that’s Greg in the top-right frame):

“Scuzzball No. 2 . . . is Bone (Greg Dunham), a longhaired, trench-coated killer who looks like a Matrix character played by Sam Shepard.”– Matt Zoller Seitz, from his New York Times review of The Lookout.

A group of us went to see the film this past weekend. Please pardon the unsolicited gushing: Dunham rocks!

Celebrity Theatre

“After the years and years of weaker and waterier imitations, we now find ourselves rejecting the very notion of a holy stage. It is not the fault of the holy that it has become a middle-class weapon to keep the children good.”